Reading Journal Seven

Nature and Nature’s God by Matthew Scully is the piece I have chosen to respond for Reading Journal Seven. This piece is about views of a vegetarian.

One of the quotes I underlined, ‘How many people can actually pinpoint some moment in their lives when they decided to eat meat?’ strikes the thoughtfulness of vegetarians regarding meat-eating and their courage to stop it. Another quote, ‘What sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger, the next.’ shows how hunger can affect the thoughts. Besides that, I find that the quote, ‘We may be predators, but we are the only predator with a choice in the matter’ is strong to stop people from boasting about their meat eating habit.

At the beginning of the reading, my sense of sight stands out when the deer hide is mentioned. It became an unpleasant ‘sight’ when the quarry bleeds. The words ‘dried and smoked; or boiled or baked or fried’ don’t sound appetizing enough to stimulate the sense of taste as the thought of the death of the deer is still vivid. When the author says about ‘nibbling away at our rabbit food,’ I can I imagine sound of crunchiness of the long, orange carrot when it’s bitten and chewed.

A style I note is the writer has presented a manifesto of a vegetarian in which the latter shares the views about the diet he has approached and his opposing views about meat-eating. Besides that, the piece is told from the first person’s point of view. Examples for this are, ‘I enjoy a good feed as much as anybody…’ and ‘For my part, it has always seemed a good rule.’ At the beginning of this piece, the writer has posted questions such as ‘…how troublesome to have to make a choice…?’ and ‘Why is industrial farming wrong…?’ Another style I realize is the writer has used a quote from another piece, The Yearling. This one paragraph long quote is about Jody being sorry for causing a deer to die, but later, being torn between pity and hunger.

I sense hypocrisy when people ‘could not bear to see how it (the meat) was produced’ yet, they eat meat. I felt kind of embarrassed as I am categorized under this group of people! In term of science, humans are animals. The mind is what greatly differentiates human beings from the other animals and I believe this is the reason for humans to be able to adapt ‘unnatural secondary nature’. I belief the author’s point, humans are not meat eaters by nature. Humans have mind to decide. Hence, this might be the reason for the human population to start consuming meat when they choose to taste meats due to curiosity. Our ancestors might have developed liking for the meat which lead to change in the diet of humankind. I wonder what else human being’s ‘unnatural secondary nature’ is.